Impact of environmental regulations on groundwater discharges in tunnel: A case study

In today’s environmentally conscious society, government regulations have become more stringent in controlling the quality of groundwater discharges from construction activities. These regulations have increased the construction cost of tunneling projects. This paper presents the results of the first large-scale field application of present-day water treatment technologies to handle groundwater discharges during the construction of a rock tunnel in sedimentary rock. Extensive field and laboratory testing of the contaminants in the discharges such as total suspended solids, pH and oil and grease were performed during tunnel excavation and concrete lining operations. The operation, performance, cost and effectiveness of the treatment technologies are evaluated in this paper.